Why does my Mac keep freezing and applications not responding?!?

Hello everyone, I have a mid 2009 MacBook Pro, 500gb HD, 4gb ram. The problem is that it keeps freezing. I am writing this on my iPhone because my laptop would probably just freeze up if I even attempted to open an application. The problem is that my laptop won't stop freezing up. As soon as I have any application open, it will stop being responsive, give me the beach ball spinning wheel thing, and I'll use command-option-escape to open the force quit menu (because at this point the mouse usually can me moved around the screen but just makes the system get worse) to force quit what ever applications I have open. Then finder will stop responding, and then nothing will work until I do a forced shut down (hold the power button down) and turn it back on again, where the same thing happens within a minute. I tried repairing permissions and doing a P RAM reset, but have had no success with either. Please help, this is ridiculous, I can barely use my laptop and I need it for school. Thanks,
-Dylan

Your issue sounds like the hard drive is failing or it was bumped or moved while it was operating and corrupted the data on the drive.
Hard to tell for sure, run through this list of fixes
Step by Step to fix your Mac
Note your signature says it's a 2009 model, that's almost 4 years old and near it's end of life stage of apx 4.5-5 years, a new drive might fix the machine, but clogged dust vents could be killing it too..
Out of AppleCare and warranty, looks like you might be doing it yourself.
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
My computer is not working, is my personal data lost?
Install/upgrade RAM or storage drive in Mac's
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6

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Why does my Mac keep freezing and applications not responding?!?

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